Hello Minh,

I am truly sorry to hear what you are going through. Break-ups are painful and , no matter how right the decision was for your” , you will always feel a certain amount of doubt initially.

Seven years is a long time and you will have developed a strong connection with your former boyfriend, and even a small part of defining “your” self.

The only advice I feel I can give is based upon my own personal experiences. I went through the same feelings you are now going through after I ended a 4 year relationship. Months after we had separated, I wondered whether the fact I was missing him equated having made a mistake. This is the key question.

The answers, or at least the approaches I took to trying to find the answer were numerous. I cannot say which works best , but I felt, for me, a combination of all of them worked:

1. Try to focus on yourself and what you need to do for yourself to heal and build yourself a happy life. You are already ahead of the game, having identified some personal life goals, i.e. travel. Focus on this and other things you need to nourish YOUR self. You mentioned your former boyfriend was a huge part of your confidence and happiness in the past. Whilst loving relationships will always contribute to our happiness and well-being, it is important to for us to begin to look at what we can do to provide this for ourselves. In my case, I found this useful.

2. Reflect on what brought you to the decision to end the relationship. Is that still relevant? If you decided to try and get him back, do you think things will be different? This can be a really difficult question to ask oneself when you are feeling vulnerable. It is important to try and answer this honestly. Dig deep. I found when I asked myself this question, the circumstances that brought me to end the relationship still existed and this actually helped me better process , and deal with, the doubts I had been having. This is not to say , you will have the same outcome from your reflection, but it is important you think about it.

3. Learning from experiences to draw lessons for life. Once I had accepted that ending the relationship was the right thing for me, I decided I wanted to try and learn from my relationship experience, good and bad. I decided to reflect (even made a list) of the things in our relationship that worked well for me, and the things that did not. I looked at these from two angles: 1. My behaviour; and 2. His behaviour. I found this an incredibly useful exercise and felt proud of myself in that I was taking responsibility for my emotional well-being with the hope of being better able to identify bad habits I had when in a relationship (e.g. letting the relationship become more than myself!) as well as his (lack of communication, selfish, etc). The aim of this is to help guide you in future relationships, both intimate and non-intimate.

These three things helped me a lot. I am not a relationship expert (by any standard!!!), but wanted to help you deal with your pain by sharing my own experience.

I really hope you find peace and I know there are many great people who use this forum and can probably give you better advice than I.

Take care of “yourself” (and I promise you, you will find a happy future filled with love) .